


A Conversation

by derseofprospit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Humanstuck, M/M, also i have no idea where this is going, but not quite yet, i suspect mature themes ahead, which is unprofessional of me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:38:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1962345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derseofprospit/pseuds/derseofprospit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat Vantas has a lot of friends, sure, but in a world where he lives on the streets, these friends try to help him in any way they can. When a certain cat-like friend of his brings up one Dave Strider, a super rich guy that lives alone, the adventure begins. </p>
<p>This started out as a short story inspired by a practice prompt that said, "write a conversation between two or more characters. It can be angry, or calm, dramatic or not. Have it lead up to something big."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conversation

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” she lowers her voice. This is no place to be voicing her thoughts, especially with others so close at hand. “Why do _you_ care?”

The mid-afternoon sun beats down relentlessly on the two, who sit at a small circle of a table under an umbrella that does nothing to block it. Her legs, crossed at the ankle like a lady’s should, dangle precariously off the chair. The seat was meant for someone taller, meant for someone of ridiculous height, and her toes couldn't reach the ground if she tried. Instead, they rest on the bar that she hopes was supposed to sturdy the chair. She hated being disconnected from the earth, being unable to make a quick escape if needed. Lucky for her, a cat always lands on its feet.

“I just need the money.” He lowers his eyes to the table, feeling too shameful even to look at her. Never would he participate in such a daunting, immoral task if he had the choice. So low in the financial department in fact, that he was holding on for dear life at the bottom of the fiscal cliff, trying desperately not to do an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the damn thing. He was willing to do anything.  

At her silence, he risks a glance at her.

The large straw sunhat flops over her in such a way that shadows dance across her skin. Too-big sunglasses cover over half her face, but he only sees his own worried reflection in them. The rims are dark blue. It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking with her face covered, but he supposes that’s the point. She would never wear such accessories if it wasn't necessary, because she is a practical person. So practical, in fact, that she enjoys dressing up in costumes appropriate for the situation any time she is able to.

She sips at her chamomile tea and smiles.

“I believe I can help you with your purrdicament.”

Her accent has always been strange to him, and she’s always been vague about why it is she talks that way. Used to the way she rolls her R’s and other not-quite impediments, he ignores it.

His eyebrows shoot up. Always up for a solution, a way to get out of things, this guy.

He looks so silly in the summer, with his large black sweater that covers too much of his slight frame. Isn't he scorching under there? It’s making her sweat just looking at the guy, though she’s decked out in tiny shorts and a tank top. Still, he isn't nearly as small as her. He can almost touch the ground in that chair.

She gestures for him to lean closer, over the table, and he does. She counts to three in her head, just because dramatic effect and her whisper goes almost unheard.

“I know a guy.”

Irritation floods through him as he throws himself backward in his chair, slamming his hands on the table. Is she joking right now? Nepeta knows everyone in town and the next town over. What will that help accomplish for him? He voices his thoughts loudly, angrily, with foul language and wild exaggeration as the cherry on top, causing others to stare unapproving in their direction.

She interrupts him mid-rant.

“His name is Dave Strider.”

The name is familiar. He can’t quite place a face to the name, though. Was he someone he met on the street? Someone that maybe gave him five bucks and a pat on the shoulder out of sympathy?

He looks around behind Nepeta, in thought. Strangers walk by, children complaining about being tired, adults with sodden posture. Cars sit in traffic in a hurry to get to work, or maybe home, or the mall even. A billboard stands tall above the shops across the street, advertising some stupid movie with badly drawn cartoon effects. The bright colors strain his eyes. It’s no use, he can’t remember.

He viciously rips a chunk of bread from the roll in his hands and looks back at Nepeta expectantly.

“I’m surpurrised you don’t recognize the name,” she says. “He’s purretty famous.”

Karkat doesn't care for this comment. How would he know? He basically lives under a rock, spending his days picking through dumpsters for food or loitering around some people he can barely call friends. There is no time for celebrities to be in his life, unless it’s to give generous amounts of money. This brings him back to the conversation at hand.

“Famous, but lonely,” she says sadly. “I’ve only spoken to him a couple of times, but there’s someone that can help you out.”

She tells him that he’s rich, that he lives in a penthouse apartment just outside of town, in the city. Karkat knows just the building she’s talking about, but doesn’t remember how to get there and is too far away for him to walk. Especially in this heat, with a serious lack of water or nourishment of any kind, he couldn’t take the risk.

Because she doesn’t know Dave Strider as much as she leads him to believe and doesn’t own a car, Nepeta directs Karkat to one Terezi Pyrope. She hands him a plastic water bottle and a large cookie before sending him on his way to her apartment, not far from here, staying to pay the bill.

 

When he arrives, he is relieved to find that he doesn’t have to climb several flights of stairs. Terezi is someone he knows well, a friend from childhood. The building she lives in towers so high that Karkat is shocked that Dave Strider doesn’t live here instead. But because she is legally blind, her apartment is on the first floor.

It’s been quite some time since he last spoke to her – he was invited to a party two or three months ago and the pair of them ended out slumped on the couch, drunkenly making fun of the other guests. 

Still, he knocks loudly on the door and prays that she’s awake. Because when Terezi Pyrope sleeps, nothing in the world could wake her.

The door, once painted an annoying yellow, has been recolored into a dim brown. She said it’s because she hates the taste of lemons. Karkat never quite grasped why she related colors to taste, especially since she couldn’t see them, but she often asked the specific hue of an object simply so she can judge it based on taste, sometimes going so far as to lick them. But towards the bottom of the door, even a few stray specks towards the top, have been chipped away as if hit by something.

Suddenly the door is ripped open, and she appears before him, dressed in nothing but a tee shirt and white boxers with tiny printed images of some stupid stuffed dragon she’s always had a passion for. Her retractable cane bonks him in the shin. Soreness stabs at him and his reflex is to yell at her, because what the fuck, but he stops himself. Her skin is paler than Karkat remembers. There are sunken bags under her eyes, which are entirely red; including what would be the whites of them. She got to choose which glass eyes she wanted before she went through surgery.

He does, however, take a tentative step back.

“What?” She barks. She waves her cane around in front of her and when it doesn’t hit anyone, she says, “This better not be stupid ding dong ditchers again because I will kick your asses when you come back!”

Too often she has had to drag herself out of the comfortable chair in her living room because of an obnoxious rapping at her door, only to hear absolutely nothing. Children messing around with her, treating her like a buffoon, like an old man. After a while, she simply stopped answering. Using carefully chosen, cautiously woven phrases, Terezi managed to convince a longtime, bullshitting intolerant friend of hers, named Sollux, to bring her groceries.

Today was the first day she’s stepped outside in weeks.

He rolls his eyes.

“It’s me,” he mutters. “Karkat.”

It’s as if the light has reached her face. She brightens at his insecure voice, straightens her slump into an animated posture.

“Long time no see!” She pokes.

Neither of them point out that it has been longer to her than it has to him.

When she got into the accident that stole her eyes, the two of them were barely nine years old. For the rest of her life, she carried around the image of eight year old Karkat everywhere he was; anytime he spoke to her it came from the mumbling lips of his child form. This was a coping mechanism, she was told by a doctor, but the fact of it is she has no idea what he looks like after-puberty. Is he drop-dead gorgeous, or so ugly she should be glad she’s blind? Well, it’s not like it matters anyway.

He smiles, heart warming at her godforsaken shit-eating grin. It really has been too long.  

Karkat asks her about Dave Strider, and how she knows him.

“Oh, I dated him once. It didn’t work out too great, but that was so long ago.” She doesn’t sound at all like she’s talking about a past relationship. Maybe about the weather, or how tiresome answering the door is, but not a close connection with a celebrity.

It must have really hurt.

“He’s this cool guy movie director. Haven’t you heard about SBHJ???” Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: a film with audiences of momentous proportions. She doesn’t suppose Karkat would enjoy the cinematic masterpiece, as it’s a comedy and Karkat doesn’t do movies that aren’t romance. However, he must have at least heard of it. Billboards, television and radio commercials, flyers blew it up all over town, and when wasn’t he all over town?

“What the fuck is that?” His reply is nigh instantaneous.

Karkat recalls the movie poster he stared at behind Nepeta this morning, the one with the colors that gave him a headache. What was the name of it? He couldn’t get past the ridiculous font.

She just sighs and invites him in, but then he’s asking her if she can show him where he lives. That Nepeta told him that she could show him.

“ ‘Course. But who exactly do you assume is going to be driving? Surely not the blind girl!” She drapes a frail hand over her forehead, as if her driving would be scandalous.

He’ll admit that thought never even crossed his mind.

“Um…” He remembers the bottle of water and cookie that Nepeta threw at him. She is well aware that Terezi can’t drive… but she does have plenty of food and water. “We could walk.”

Her laugh echoes through the hallway.

Exoneration almost undertakes him, but something rises in his chest and he needs to defend himself. She could walk to Strider’s house, she’s done it before! Terezi used to go on walks all the time by herself and still make it home safely without harm. There was always an escort with her, of course, but that’s exactly what Karkat was here for.

Before he gets the chance to yell excuses at her, she slams the door in his face.

So much for that. With a heavy sigh, he leans against the wall opposite her apartment, and slides to the ground. What’s the use of going anywhere, anyway? There’s nowhere for him to go, nowhere he needs to be. He runs his hands through his hair, which has turned into a tangled, oily birds’ nest. How long has it been since he last had a shower?

Suddenly Terezi is hitting him with her stick again, shoving something at him. A cell phone.

“Why don’t we just have _him_ come  _here_?”

He becomes abruptly aware of the situation. What happens when this famous, well-known, probably well-dressed man shows up in his shiny limo, takes one swift look at Karkat, who is all bones and dirt, laughs and drives off with Terezi?

It’s much too late to get nervous now, because she’s already dialed and jabbering on with someone on the other end. Since childhood, she’s always talked using exaggerated movements with her hands, and this comes back to bite Karkat as she bumps and whacks him in places that should never be whacked or bumped.

Snapping the flip-phone shut, she smacks her lips and sits down across from him.

“And now, we wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Any constructive criticism or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


End file.
